4 BUDDING S. AMERICAN DEMOCRACIES TRYING TO GROW ROOTS

When Alan Garcia Perez took the oath of office as president on July 28, it marked the first time in 73 years that one freely elected Peruvian government had succeeded another.

It was an important event not only for Peru but for all the other nations in South America that are struggling to convince their citizens that democracy is their best hope for the future.

Since 1979, eight Latin American nations have thrown out the generals and the dictators and replaced them with civilian governments. Only Chile and Paraguay are under military leadership.

Each of these eight nations has installed civilian rule under different circumstances and with different problems facing them. But all started their democratic experiments with their economies in shambles.

In most of the nations, people are worse off now than they were 10 to 20 years ago. Economically, the last decade has been the worst in memory for the continent.

Yet, the experiments appear to be working.

The four newest democratic administrations--in Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay--made the transition relatively smoothly. But each now faces impatient constituents who are asking, ''Is this the best democracy can do?'' Building a solid base for democracy under such circumstances is difficult work. The obvious danger lies in the fact that expectations have been raised without any quick solutions being available.

Or, as a South American political observer put it, ''People in Latin America are in the mood to think that democracy is the answer to all their problems.''

But another problem is one inherent to democracy: tolerance.

Striving for open societies with freedom of expression for all leaves these young and weak governments open to critical assault from the Right and the Left. This was something their authoritarian predecessors did not have to worry about.

Each country is dealing with its democratic growing pains in a quite different way, in part due to their individual experiences with democracy in the past.

Peru had five years of civilian rule prior to the inauguration of Garcia. But in the opinion of many political observers, the administation of Fernando Belaunde Terry was five years of well-meaning but ineffectual rule during which the country`s economy and social fabric decayed.

With overwhelming poverty at the core, Peru`s political situation grew worse and worse between 1980 and 1985. Along with the economic distress came a growing rebel threat from the mysterious and radical Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, guerrillas.

Development of the Maoist band, which has carried out increasingly bold terrorist attacks throughout the country and in Lima itself, was similar to the growth of other guerrilla movments in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay just prior to the coups that brought the generals to power.

But Peruvians were spared the military takeover with the rise of Garcia and his American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party.

Promising nothing but hard work and hard times, Garcia nonetheless has become enormously popular since coming to office.

He has taken a hard line with the country`s international creditors, cut military spending and promised to apply the full weight of the law to the Sendero Luminoso terrorists, although he has appointed a commission to find ways to negotiate with the guerrillas.

Peruvian political observers say the situation was so dire when Garcia came to power that few, including the military leaders, wanted any part of trying to solve the nation`s problems.

The Argentines, after nearly three decades of one-party rule under Juan Domingo Peron and then seven years of military dictatorship, have devoured democracy with the same appetite with which they savor their steaks and pasta. They have taken President Raul Alfonsin to their hearts and accepted the harsh political medicine he has dished out, including a 60-day state of seige declared Oct. 25 to allow the arrest of six military officials and six civilians accused of a recent rash of bombings, without too much protest.

There has been a burst of creativity in the arts. Young lovers kiss under the huge trees in the Plaza San Martin, no longer fearful of the police who used to chase them away on orders from the generals, who saw such behavior as immoral.

Most striking has been the nation`s soul-searching about the country`s 1976-79 ''dirty war,'' when the armed forces flouted the law as they sought to crush leftist opposition. Nine of the former military rulers, three of them former presidents, are now on trial charged with crimes ranging from murder to kidnaping and torture.

For Argentina, the return to democracy has been a return to past traditions.

Prior to the advent of Peronism, the political movement headed by Peron that was based in the labor unions and supported by friendly army officers, Argentine politics had been dominated for years by the Radical Party, now led by President Alfonsin. The nation had a democratic tradition to build on.

''I see what is happening now as a return to the patterns of the past,''

said a longtime Argentine political observer.

''The Radicals have their base in the lower middle class,'' he said,

''and that is the bulk of the population. Peronism was a hiccough in this country`s political development.''

After the Radical victory in the 1983 presidential election, something that suprised many observers, the party has consolidated its power and appears to be headed toward a victory in congressional and local elections to be held Sunday.

''This is a period of consolidation for the nation and for the party,''

said Caesar Jarolavski, a Radical leader in the congress. He predicted the party soon would draw members away from the ranks of the splintered and dispirited Peronists.

Disgraced after the ''dirty war,'' its handling of the economy and the humiliating defeat by Britain in the Falkland Islands war, the military poses no serious threat to Alfonsin at the moment.

However, the recent bombings indicate that there are, both within and outside the military, opposition elements that appear to be small and not representative of the general mood of Argentines toward democracy, yet are better organized than was believed.

The general disdain in which the military is held in Argentina sets it apart from Brazil, Uruguay and Peru, something that is important in understanding the different paths taken toward the goal of democracy.

In Uruguay, just across the Rio de la Plata from Argentina, President Julio Maria Sanguinetti is ruling a nation with a long and solid tradition of democracy.

The 12 years of military dictatorship that ended with Sanguinetti`s inauguration in March interrupted 50 years of steady democracy.

Eroded by economic woes and the threat from leftist Tupamaro urban guerrillas, democracy gave way to a coup in 1973. Twelve years later, when Sanguinetti promised in his inaugural address to make democracy ''our great national cause,'' people danced in the streets.

But unlike Argentina, there have been no generals put on trial and no soul-searching over the deaths and disappearances that occurred during the years of military rule. There are two reasons for this.

First, the scope of the ''dirty war'' in Uruguay was miniscule when compared to that of Argentina. While 9,000 people disappeared and were almost certainly murdered in Argentina, only about three dozen Uruguayans fell victim to the generals.

At its peak there were 7,000 political prisoners in Uruguay`s jails, an extremely large number for a nation of less than 3 million people. However, most were freed during the waning days of military rule.

The other factor that sets Uruguay apart from Argentina is that the military men who ruled the country left office convinced that they had done the nation a service by eliminating the leftist threat.

They also negotiated an agreement with civilian leaders guaranteeing that there would be no Argentina-style trials to blame them for human rights violations.

Thus Sanguinetti also rules without a threat from the military, but for very different reasons than Alfonsin in Argentina.

Sanguinetti now faces the task of solving the nation`s economic problems

(it has the highest per capita foreign debt in Latin America) and satisfying the already growing impatience of Uruguayans. There have been an average of 30 strikes a month since he came to power.

Brazil, the continent`s largest and most populous nation, the world`s largest debtor and a vast economic power, had lived for 21 years under the military before its return to democracy in March.

Unlike Argentina and Uruguay, the country found itself poorly prepared for dealing with its new political realities.

No Brazilian under 45 ever had voted for a president until the much beloved Tancredo Neves was elected in January.

Neves, a moderate who formed a broad coalition of opposition groups and dissidents in order to win, died before taking office and was succeeded by his vice presidential running mate, Jose Sarney.

Although the Brazilian military negotiated its way out of power, it failed to have its candidate, Paulo Salim Maluf, elected.

Here, too, the armed forces worked out a deal with the civilians to ensure that they would not be face the same kind of reprisals as their Argentine counterparts.

While the military was ready to accept Neves, they were treated to an unexpected bonus by the twist of fate that brought Sarney to power. The new president was a leader of the pro-military Democratic Social Party.

Although he does not have the emotional appeal to Brazilians that the grandfatherly, 74-year-old Neves did, Sarney has maintained considerable popularity. What he lacks, however, is the political power to hold together the coalition Neves formed.

Without a strong president, 25 new political parties, most tied to the ambitions of particular politicians, have been formed, and the texture of Brazilian politics has taken on some of the characteristics it had before the 1964 coup that brought the military to power.

Regional differences, especially in areas that are heavily industrialized or have a great deal of autonomy in handling government affairs, have added to Sarney`s problems in seeking to entrench his power.

Unlike the political and economic bungling that characterized military rule in Argentina and Uruguay, the period of military pre-eminence in Brazil was a period of dramatic modernization and economic expansion.

Like Uruguay, Brazilian generals left power believing they had served their country well.